President Donald Trump has again blamed India and China for his decision last year to withdraw from the historic Paris climate accord, saying the agreement was unfair as it would have made the US pay for nations which benefited the most from the deal.
Trump in June last year announced his decision to withdraw from the Paris deal, saying the accord would have cost America trillions of dollars, killed jobs, and hindered the oil, gas, coal and manufacturing industries.
But he also, at the time, said he would be open to renegotiating the deal, which was agreed by nearly 200 nations over the course of years.
"We knocked out the Paris Climate Accord. It would have been a disaster. Would have been a disaster for our country," Trump said in his address to the Conservative Political Action Committee.
Arguing that countries like China and India are benefiting the most from the Paris agreement, Trump had said that the agreement on climate change was unfair to the US, as it badly hit its businesses and jobs.
Defending his decision Trump said, "You have a lot of oil and gas that we found -- you know, technology has been amazing. And we found things that we never knew. But we have massive -- just about the top in the world -- we have massive energy reserves. We have coal. We have so much".
"And basically, they were saying, 'Don't use it. You can't use it'. So what it does is it makes us uncompetitive with other countries. It's not going to happen, I told them. It's not going to happen," he added.
"And China -- their agreement didn't kick in until 2030. Right? Our agreement kicks in immediately. Russia -- they're allowed to go back into the 1990s, which was not a clean environmental time," Trump said.
Commenting on India and other countries, he said, "Other countries, big countries -- India and others -- we had to pay, because they considered them a growing country.
"They were a growing country. I said, What are we? Are we allowed to grow, too? Ok? No, Are we allowed to grow?" he said.
"They called India a developing nation. They call China a developing nation. But the United States? We're developed. We can pay," Trump said.
The President asked if people understood about the Paris accord.
"Because it sounds so good. It's like some of the environmental regulations that I cut. They have the most beautiful titles. And sometimes, I'd say, 'Look, I'm just going to close my eyes and sign this because you know what? I'm going to get killed on this one.' And I get so much thanks. The country knows what I'm doing," he said.
"We couldn't build. We couldn't farm. If you had a puddle on your land, they called it a lake for the purposes of environmental. I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy," Trump said.
